IRS Phone Scam Targeting California

Federal Investigators are calling it the biggest IRS phone scam in the history of phone scams and as the Investigative Unit reports, California is getting hit the hardest, with over a million dollars lost since October.

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IRS Phone Scam Targeting California

The phone rings. The caller is from the IRS. He says you filed your taxes incorrectly. You owe the government money and must pay immediately or risk arrest. What do you do? Stephen Stock reports in a video that aired on July 16, 2014. (Published Thursday, Oct. 27, 2016)

The phone rings. The caller is from the IRS. He says you filed your taxes incorrectly. You owe the government money and must pay immediately or risk arrest. What do you do?

Nothing, according to officials, because the caller is a scammer.

This is the latest twist on the old trick: a phone scam.

Investigators with the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), that oversees the IRS, say a simple phone call has convinced thousands of taxpayers to give up millions of dollars across the country, by preying on the age-old fear that you owe the government money.

California has been a cash cow for the scammers.

Investigators say they have tracked more than 60,000 of these calls across the US since last October and scammers have collected around $4 million, with a quarter of that coming from California. However, these are just calls reported, TIGTA says the actual losses could be two to four times higher.

Based on the reports, investigators believe the scammers are targeting immigrants and senior citizens.

The Investigative Unit has received dozens of reports from viewers in the Bay Area getting these types of calls.

All the voicemails have a similar pitch: identifying themselves as the IRS or the Treasury Department and saying the recipient of the call owes money; they say the issue is “time sensitive” and some reference a lawsuit filed against the recipient.

“Before you get arrested can you call us back,” Greg Manubay’s answering machine at his Castro Valley phone shouted into our camera. “We have received a legal petition notice against your name”

Manubay, a native of the Philippines, got the call around tax day this year. The caller said he was with the Treasury Department. Manubay, a retired IT manager, was tech-savvy enough to search for the caller's name online, identify the caller as a fraud and report it without paying. However, he fears other senior citizens may take the bait, so he called the Investigative Unit.

“It makes me really mad that there are people like that trying to target senior people like me,” Greg told the NBC Bay Area.